


Rule of Cool

by DwarvenGatorade



Series: Cracks of Valdemar [5]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Gen, pew pew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25205692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenGatorade/pseuds/DwarvenGatorade
Summary: After Leareth sets off an eternal winter everywhere, Vanyel and Savil must defeat him in a climactic battle that will show him the meaning of the word "cool".
Series: Cracks of Valdemar [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813504
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Rule of Cool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Swimmer963](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swimmer963/gifts).



> Content warning: extremely cool.

“This is insane!” Savil shouted, as she and Vanyel rode down the avalanche toward Leareth’s lair.

 _:Insanely cool!:_ her magical ethics snowboard responded.

“Kellan’s right!” Vanyel shouted back as he and Yfandes carved past a deadly grove of pine trees. “And we’re going to need every ounce of awesomeness to turn back Leareth’s eternal winter.”

 _:Never has protecting Valdemar been so radical,:_ Yfandes affirmed from underfoot.

Rapidly approaching as the avalanche carried them to the base of the mountain were monsters of all shapes and sizes, genetically engineered to be mindless weapons of war and arranged in monotonically increasing order of threat.

A battalion of orcs on skis came after Savil, and she slashed out with the shining sword Need to deftly disable them. A flight of _makaar_ harried Vanyel with their wicked claws, and Yfandes took control and launched him off a ramp, where he cast a mid-air reverse weather spell to blast the entire flock while doing a backflip. A gruesome, knivesy assemblage of night-dark demons descended on both of them from all directions, and only the combined forces of Savil’s spirit-bound _leshy’a Kal’enedral_ and Vanyel’s concerted Demonsbaning were able to parry the demonic attacks and turn their own evil against them.

At last the snowboarding Heralds sprayed to a stop, and looked up at the mountains around them. “This is the pass,” Savil said. “How do we get into his lair?”

A seismic rumbling shook the ground around them, and they shielded against falling rocks as the adjoining mountain moved, separated, took on a life of its own.

 **“THIS IS MY LAIR!”** shouted the mountain itself.

 _:Go go go!:_ Yfandes sent, as she and Kellan rapidly transformed into rocket-powered gliders and took Savil and Van to the skies, just before a rockslide of giant boulders crushed everything in the pass into dust.

Gaining altitude and navigating the rain of deadly debris, they could see that the mountain had taken the form of a stony giant and was possessed, surrounded by seven interlocking auras of elemental magic, _Leareth’s_ magic controlling it like a vast avatar of destruction.

“How can we possibly defeat _that?”_ Savil shouted.

Vanyel used his Fetching to draw out eleven crystal-encrusted metal rings and arrange them in a floating circle around himself. With a jolt of power, he activated the eleven permanent Gates, turning each glowing ring into a portal to one of eleven distinct rooms in an abandoned tower in a distant desert.

“With a blast from the past,” he replied.

Gate-rings spinning around him now and pointed at the towering titan that Leareth had become, Vanyel used another jolt of power to activate Urtho’s eleven weapons of apocalypse. Channeled through the rings, chaotic splintering streams of lightning/death/flame/rage/arcana poured forth with annihilatory wrath, scouring the mountain’s auras and reducing the titan to rubble.

Floating out of the stony wreckage came a sphere of darkness and stars with the brooding, winged, horned, blood-and-fire-emanating Leareth at its center.

“If I cannot rule over civilization,” he screamed villainously, “then I shall rule over ash!” The sphere gravitationally attracted Vanyel’s eleven crackling rays of power, and grew darkly, the stars within heating and brightening with pinprick intensity as they absorbed the nigh-infinite font of energy.

“Not in this timeline!” Savil shouted, as she tossed Need to her _leshy’a Kal’enedral_ , who plunged it into her own ghost-heart in a double-magic sacrifice that created an anti-magic vacuum that sucked the cataclysmic levels of power through a vortex, grounded in Savil’s hastily-constructed mid-air Gate, and dispersed their energies into the many planes.

 _:Take him down, Van!:_ Yfandes sent, as the resulting anti-magic twister drew the two transforming Companions, Savil, and all of Vanyel and Leareth’s artifacts and clothing through to Haven.

Vanyel and Leareth stared at each other, naked and drained of magic, standing atop rubble in the wind-whipped snow.

“Herald Vanyel.”

“Leareth.”

As one they ran forth — Leareth threw the first punch, Vanyel blocked, swept with a leg, but Leareth jumped and snap-kicked, Vanyel caught his foot but Leareth balanced there in mid-air and kicked at his head from the other side, Vanyel dropped and sprang backward, catching Leareth in the chest with both feet and forcing him stumbling back.

They recovered their balance. Leareth spat out a glob of blood into the snow. “Very good. But you know what they say...” He reached over his shoulder, and tore off the ‘x’ duct taped to his back to reveal a rusted metal shiv. “Never bring a Herald to a knife fight.”

Vanyel chuckled. “You just don’t get it, do you Leareth? In this world it doesn’t matter if you’re powerful...” Vanyel reached behind _his_ back and tore off _his_ ‘x’ of duct tape, and drew out a pair of unbelievably slick sunglasses.

Leareth rushed Vanyel with the shiv as Vanyel put on his shades, and Leareth lunged, but Vanyel juked left and dodged right, and Leareth tripped, fell, and slashed open his own jugular. A spray of red on white snow.

“It matters if you’re cool.”

As Leareth’s body failed him, his eternal winter melted and blew away, revealing spring blossoms and butterflies. Leareth’s ghost floated up from his corpse, shaking a fist at Vanyel and ranting, “I’ll be back! Next time you won’t be here to stop me!”

A Gate opened behind Vanyel, with Savil and a lineup of Heralds young and old holding swords and artifacts and transforming robotic Companions in epic action poses.

Vanyel walked toward the Gate, then stopped, took off his shades, and looked back at Leareth’s disappearing spirit.

“I won’t. They will.”

(•_•)

( •_•)> ⌐■ - ■

( ⌐■ _ ■ )

_YEEEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!_

_FIN_


End file.
